Atlanta tornado discussion

[fatjoe3833]

CNN reports damage to the Georgia Dome.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/0...ies&eref=yahoo

[JB987]

Just saw a short news report from CNN minutes ago stating that a possible tornado has damaged some portions of the Georgia Dome (atrium, etc...) any confirmation from other sources out there?

[Nawaid Ladak]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/0...ado/index.html

confirmed, saw this a couple of minutes ago too came to post and got cought up with other things...

on a lighter note, CNN would ovbiously know this...

article

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A possible tornado swept through downtown Atlanta on Friday night, disrupting a college basketball game and damaging the building that houses CNN.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for the area, in effect until 10 p.m. The storm came through at about 9:45 p.m.

Inside CNN Center, water poured through damage in the ceiling into the building's atrium. Glass shattered, and parts of the building filled with dust.

Next door at the Georgia Dome, the SEC conference basketball game between Alabama and Mississippi State was halted. The storm visibly rippled the ceiling of the dome and caused some damage, video of the arena showed. Scaffolding holding the facility's scoreboard swayed 15 minutes after the storm hit.

[technoL]

Perhaps we'll get that water game faster than we thought...

On a more serious note, I hope everything's alright up there. We just turned on CNN in our room and saw the damage and it doesn't look too good.

[Coredesat]

Looked pretty scary on the feed I was watching at the time. Someone was kind enough to upload a video of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4K5e9wqVB8

[falconmaster]

Originally Posted by technoL

Perhaps we'll get that water game faster than we thought...

On a more serious note, I hope everything's alright up there. We just turned on CNN in our room and saw the damage and it doesn't look too good.

Hope all is well and no one got hurt.

If there is water.....we are ready!

www.h2orobots.org

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/0...ado/index.html

on a lighter note, CNN would ovbiously know this...

article

"...Inside CNN Center, water poured through damage in the ceiling into the building's atrium. Glass shattered, and parts of the building filled with dust."

Last year, my husband and I had a room in the Omni Hotel that had a less than desirable view into the atrium. We couldn't even see the teams dining in the food court. When there was a thunderstorm outside, I had no clue it was happening, because there was no outside view. If a tornado like this one had struck when we were in our room, we would have known about it.

I've long wondered if all those imposing downtown Atlanta buildings were designed to resist Georgia's violent weather. I guess now we know the answer.

[Mihai]

I hope everyone is ok.

From what I read in the yahoo! article it doesn't seem like there is enough damage to greatly affect the Championship event.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080315/.../atlanta_storm

Anybody know more specifics?

[GaryVoshol]

A report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/met...ge_tab_newstab

Fortunately it sounds like few injuries.

[feliks_rosenber]

I read somewhere about one severely injured. I hope that turns out to be wrong.

[Wetzel]

Bill Miller mentioned this during opening ceremonies today at Pittsburgh. So far, there are limited reports of injuries. Other details are still unknown, but are being investigated at this time.

Wetzel

[Coredesat]

Hearing there was a ridiculous amount of damage to various parts of downtown Atlanta. The Georgia Dome got off fairly lightly compared to the Georgia World Congress Center, CNN Center, and surrounding areas. The National Weather Service confirmed an EF2 tornado with max winds of 130 mph. CNN is, of course, covering this fairly extensively.

This probably won't affect the FIRST Championship event, but there might still be cleanup going on in the area by then (yes, perhaps a month from now).

[Pat McCarthy]

The CNN.com article I read said that most windows on one side of the Omni hotel were shattered. I don't know how long it takes to replace that much, but it could affect team's hotel reservations.

[Jeff Pahl]

Well, I can confirm that it's pretty ugly in Atlanta. I was there last night, and the three hours of local news that I watched in my hotel room did not look good. A lot of the contents and pieces of the Omni hotel were in the street. Pieces of the roof and sides at Phillips arena were missing. At least one hole in the roof at the dome. A broken water line inside the GWCC somewhere was running down one of the interior staircases like a waterfall. As I went through downtown on the interstate very early this morning to get to the airport to come back home, a large swath of buildings still did not have power. Billboards and interstate exit signs were just missing. And apparently it is worse to the east of the dome area, where at least 20 houses were flattened, and a condo building collapsed. The fire department did not excpect to have the condo building structurally stabilized enough to even search until tomorrow.

Please keep all those who were injured and killed (at least one that I know of), and all those involved in the clean up, in your thoughts and prayers.

Yes, if you have reservations at the Omni you probably want to call them, but wait until Monday... They have enough problems right now, the SEC basketball tourney is this weekend (there was a game in progress when the tornado hit the dome). Not only did they lose all the glass on one side of the building, but it looked like the ceiling tiles and insulation, along with some of the chairs, lamps, etc, were sucked out. Hopefully they will have it fixed in a month, but there is a lot of work to do.

Oh, yea, the Westin Peachtree Plaza (the tall round hotel with the outside glass elevator) has a bunch of windows out, too, so if you are staying there you might also want to check with them.

And, also, the Peachtree Regional is this weekend on the northeast side of ATL, and then NWS just issued a tornado warning for a couple miles north of the regional site.

[Justin Montois]

This is a crazy Video, I've walked where he is walking many times, though when I walk through it there's not 7 inches of water....
Good thing Championship isn't like next week.

I feel terrible for the people affected by this storm. I hope everything turns out as good as it can for this type of disaster.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MZnlpb...eature=related